


Mama Bear

by Tomboy13



Series: Tomboy’s AgentCorp stories [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Pregnancy, Pregnant Lena Luthor, Protective Alex Danvers, Slight Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:08:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tomboy13/pseuds/Tomboy13
Summary: Lena is carrying their first child, and Alex is going to protect her family no matter what.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This sits in with the other AgentCorp stories I’ve written (no zombies in this one though...); Alex and Lena are happily married and expecting their first baby; Alex goes a little over the top with her mama bear-ing.

The bed creaked as the lithe woman moved against her lover. Her hair was tousled, auburn strands made unkempt under grasping digits, sweat-moulded to the pale skin of her bedmate’s breasts as she thrust and rubbed, careening towards release.

They’d been making love for what felt like hours and, simultaneously, minutes, driving each other closer to the zenith with sweet words and hard touches. The room echoed now with the sound of wet squelching as she ground down erratically onto one perfectly thick thigh, their combined panting making the air soupy with need.

“Keep going, darling, that’s it. Is this good?” The brunette currently pressed to the mattress murmured, long hair tangling in her dry mouth as her body was shifted with each thrust.

“S-so good babe. You’re so good. I’m close.” The older woman gasped out into the hollow of the younger’s clavicle.

“Keep going,” was whispered again, raspily, desperately, as sharp nails dug into the muscular shoulders of the body labouring above and the hair pulling grew subconsciously harder and harder.

There was a moment of stasis, both women freezing, taught, clamped bodily together, before a shuddering and almost mournful groan broke the silence.

Alex Luthor-Danvers collapsed next to her wife, who pulled the agent firmly into her arms, cooing soothing words as the shaking body came down from its high.

After a few moments, the Danvers began gently running the fingers of one hand down towards her spouse’s pelvis.

The woman laughed, grabbed the questing hand, and said, “God, darling, no - I can’t go again, you’ve ruined me.”

Alex chuckled, placing a tender kiss to the breast she was resting on.

“Who’d have thought Lena Luthor would be worn out by only two rounds?” She teased.

Lena slapped her wife’s arm teasingly.

“It’s this little bean,” the heiress said, poking her stomach affectionately, “sapping all my energy.”

Alex leaned down, pressing her lips to the spot just below her partner’s navel, where in her mind’s eye she could see their child growing, cells multiplying exponentially under the weight of their hope.

“You don’t think we might have hurt the baby?” She asked, suddenly concerned.

The brunette frowned.

“Darling, we had sex, it’s not like we went skydiving. Bean will be happy because of all that serotonin flooding their system.”

“You really need to stop calling them bean, it’s weird. Besides which, the internet says they’ll be about the size of a raspberry now, not a bean.” 

Lena smiled down at her lover, smoothing down her wild hair with a gentle hand.

“You shouldn’t read so much on the internet, it’ll make you worry.”

Alex turned to face her wife, resting on the CEO’s thighs, basking in the attention as the agile fingers that had been playing in her hair moved to stroke her cheek, tickle her chin, rub her ear.

“Babe, between you and this baby, I have everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m never going to _stop _worrying again.”__

__

__When morning broke, it was a struggle for Alex to open her eyes, let alone get up. Forcing one eye open, she saw the old fashioned analogue clock on her bedside table reading 5:15, the insufferable beeping of her alarm underling the fact._ _

__Half blind with sleep, she stuck her hand out from under the small slither of duvet she had left, trying to hit the off button without success._ _

__From behind her, she felt Lena nudging her calf muscle with the ball of her cold foot._ _

__“Turn it off, s’too loud.” The younger woman moaned, the Irish twinge in her accent coming to the fore with annoyance._ _

__Finally hitting the snooze button, Alex rolled over, snuggling closer to her beloved’s back, which was impossibly warm and comforting. Lena pulled one of her wife’s hand round her waist, tucking it under her right breast so that it wouldn’t move, while dragging the other round her own neck. The agent chuckled._ _

__“You were such a blanket thief last night. I spent most of the night clinging to the edge of the bed, freezing cold.”_ _

__Lena grumbled something, before shuffling backwards so that her ass bumped into the other woman’s hips._ _

__“What was that?” Alex whispered, burying her nose into almost-black hair, breathing in the familiar scent of stale perfume and a particular brand of shampoo that cost more per bottle than all of her toiletries combined._ _

__“Shhhhhhhh,” Lena whispered, nuzzling into the arm under her head. “Pregnant.”_ _

__The Danvers rolled her eyes._ _

__“You can’t use that for every-“_ _

__“Shhhhh.” Lena said, louder. “ _Pregnant _.”___ _

____Alex snorted._ _ _ _

____“Ok, but last time you can get away with it.” She muttered, knowing as well as the woman she was spooning that it would never be the last time. She listened contentedly as Lena’s breathing settled down, before allowing her mind to wander down its usual path._ _ _ _

____Lying in their warm cocoon, hearing the clock tick away the seconds until they had to rise, Alex could take the time to really appreciate her situation. Words like ‘blessed’ came to mind; ‘gifts’, or ‘lucky’ too._ _ _ _

____Maybe not lucky, she thought. Lucky suggested an expiry date, and, secretly, she’d been worrying about that since the day Lena came back into her life and agreed to give their love another go._ _ _ _

____The fact was, in the early hours of the morning and the pit of the night, where no one was awake to see it, Alex allowed herself to be scared. Terrified even. Terrified that someone, somewhere, was going to realise that she, Alex Danvers, DEO Agent and all round badass, didn’t deserve all this, and then, rightly, they’d take it away. It was a clawing, irrational fear she had developed that her past mistakes were being counted by some unknown celestial being and that when they had a pile big enough, everything Alex had worked for, fought for, hoped for, would be forfeit._ _ _ _

____Losing Lena before would have been hard enough, but now, with their fledgling family sprouting in her womb, it would kill not just Alex, but, she suspected, Lena too; it would wick both of them down to the core, and leave nothing but bare bones and misery, and that she couldn’t, wouldn't, allow._ _ _ _

____Because as much as she felt that she didn’t deserve the white-picket-fence life they’d made together, and as much as she felt she hadn’t earned the loving woman and the child she so craved, there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in her mind that Lena Danvers-Luthor absolutely did, and had, and there was nothing that she wouldn’t do to make sure that both mother and baby were happy, healthy and safe. Nothing at all._ _ _ _

____Trying not to wake the woman up, Alex eased her hand free from the Luthor’s bosom and gently, reverently, squeezed her tummy, imagining that she could already feel the tiny mouse-like thump-thump-thump of a heart beat._ _ _ _

____“I’ll never let you down, not you or your mama, my little raspberry.” She whispered into the still morning air._ _ _ _

____Underneath her, Lena scrunched her nose up. “Aleeeexxx, shhhhh. Pregnant.” She whined indignantly._ _ _ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Melodrama ahoy!

“I suppose I’ll get the kettle on again, who wants coffee?”

Alex looked up quickly from her position on the living room floor, where she was bickering amicably with Susan Vasquez over a CCTV camera no bigger than a pin head.

“You’re having coffee?”

Lena rolled her eyes. “No, darling, I’m having tea, my one, doctor-approved cup for the day, seeing as you don’t want my help.”

The DEO agents exchanged glances.

“It’s not that we don’t want your help, babe. It’s just this is all government issue kit, it needs a certain touch.”

“And its stolen.” Vasquez muttered.

“It’s borrowed, there’s a difference.” Alex growled, glaring at her associate. “I told J’onn I was going to need it, I just didn’t say for how long.”

Lena sighed, holding up her open hands to indicate that she didn’t want or need to know anymore, and went to make the drinks.

In the bare expanse of their new kitchen-come-diner, Winn was sat at the breakfast bar, typing furiously away between three interconnected laptops, muttering to himself and drinking great gulps from a litre bottle of Mountain Dew. Behind him, Supergirl was floating up and down, placing plates and vases and other breakables in the top cupboards as her adopted mother handed them up; even after all this time, seeing Kara using her powers while wearing a paisley print romper suit took a little getting used to.

Eliza smiled warmly at her daughter-in-law when Lena gestured with a mug. 

“I’d love a tea, sweetie.” She said gratefully as she passed a huge tureen that Lena didn’t even remember buying up to the heroine.

The house was starting to look more like a home now, after hours of their friends and family rummaging through boxes and moving furniture. Lena had suggested that they just get the movers to do the donkey work, which had earned her a look of mixed disgust and horror from both her wife and sister-in-law. Apparently, the unpacking was the best part of moving, the reporter had excitedly informed her.

That might be true, Lena thought bitterly, except no one would let the pregnant woman help. With anything.

Any task even remotely classed as heavy lifting was automatically barred by Alex; she’d even put the kibosh on her wife carrying suitcases of clothes and bed linen up the stairs. The security system that the older Danvers sister and Agent Vasquez were setting up looked simple enough to Lena’s engineering eye, but they’d been so furtive about it that eventually she’d accepted defeat. Even Winn had been snarky when the Luthor had suggested she could lend a hand on the telematics side of things.

So instead she’d just ended up bouncing from room to room, making coffee and sandwiches and feeling utterly left out.

The problem was, since the 12 week scan when they’d finally got to see their little life in all it’s grainy, black-and-white glory, Alex had gone a little overboard with the mama bear-ing.

Whether it was ordering her wife to sit down when they were preparing dinner, or freaking out because Lena had walked home alone, it was starting to get out of hand. 

Handing Eliza her cup, Lena glanced out of the window at the darkening sky. 

“It’s getting late. I’m going to nip out and pick us up something for dinner.” 

Kara looked startled, hovering uncertainly with one hand holding an ornamental Toby Mug half way to the middle shelf. Eliza, though, only nodded sympathetically, shuffling around the brunette to start putting steaming cups onto a tray.

“You could probably do with some fresh air. You go, I’ll hand these out.”

Lena smiled gratefully, half having expected the older woman to forbid her from going. As she walked out of the kitchen, she heard Kara starting to worry out loud that maybe she, as a super powered alien, should have gone rather than ‘the pregnant lady’. Lena bit her tongue; the Kryptonian has been almost as bad as Alex since they’d told her about the new arrival.

“I’m going to pick up some dinner, darling, I won’t be long.” The heiress said firmly, bending down to give her wife a kiss before turning to leave.

Alex scrambled to her feet.

“I’ll go with you! Just let me get my keys and-“

Lena raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve had James and J’onn taking the front door off to fit your sensors, Alex, and it’s nearly 6pm. I think it’s a little more important that you get this place ship shape and secure so that we might be able to go to bed at some point today.”

Alex looked unconvinced, glancing nervously between her lover and Vasquez, who had suddenly become engrossed in a booklet of instructions written in Hungarian, and was trying very hard not to make eye contact with either woman.

“Darling, I’m just going to drive to the store, grab some food, and drive back. No need to fuss.”

Slowly, the agent nodded, with an expression of pained unease. Lena stepped closer, and taking a calloused hand in both of her own, she pressed a kiss to the palm. When she placed the hand on the paunch becoming prominent under her tight t-shirt, the Danvers visibly relaxed.

“Ok, I’m sorry, baby, of course you don’t need an escort. I just worry. Do you need some cash?”

Lena chuckled, shaking her head. Despite being the CEO of one of the most diverse and successful conglomerates in the continental United States, Alex Danvers, on a DEO wage and with student debts up to her eyeballs, never stopped trying to pay for even the smallest things.

“I’ll be back in a while.” 

Side stepping through the open front door, where the two black men were trying to work out where on the empty frame the sensors needed to sit without arguing, Lena breathed a sigh of relief.

The sky above her was still a watery blue colour, but grey clouds were gathering as dusk set in. The air felt fresh and the neighbourhood was peaceful, their road free of traffic and the sounds and smells that had coloured their life in the heart of the city.

On the drive next to Alex’s motorbike sat the red Herald Triumph that Lena knew she was shortly going to give up. She had already mentally exchanged it for a modern, economical, family runaround with seats suitable for a baby carrier and a boot big enough for a folded pram, but she was determined to enjoy it right up until the moment she handed the keys to the auction house.

Jumping in, she buckled her seat belt, switched the ignition into life and started reversing.

The noise was hideous, a loud and very final crunch of metal sheering and embedding in the black tarmac drive, followed by the absolute roar of the exhaust spewing with the silencer ripped out.

“Bollocks.”

 

Lena sat on the front steps of their new house, enjoying the early morning sunshine as it warmed her skin. In her hands, a cup of hot water with Lemon, honey and ginger was absolutely not filling that gap left by caffeine, but was at least pleasantly warming, the sweetness making her mouth feel sticky. She closed her green eyes, breathing in deeply, appreciating that the nausea she’d been plagued with for the last few days seemed to be subsiding. It was a Saturday, and the world was good.

“Kara!” 

She snapped her eyes open at the shout, in time to see her wife, lying on her back on a yoga mat stained with oil, pointing an accusing finger at her adopted sister. In her hands, the super held a heavy monkey wrench that, given the size, was more use on a light commercial vehicle than a nippy vintage sports car. The solid steel of the wrench had bent in the middle.

“Just...go over there, ok?” Alex hissed through gritted teeth, pointing back at the house.

Kara dropped the now warped tool, and stomped towards where Lena was sitting. Ungraciously, she flumped down on the grass next to her best friend’s feet. “She won’t let me help!”

It had been a week and a half since the exhaust had sheared off the 1960 convertible, and Alex was still no nearer to fixing it. Not for want of trying, Lena knew. The agent had spent every spare moment that she wasn’t at work or sleeping working on the car, but the more she worked, the worse the situation seemed to get.

“Don’t take it personally,” Lena said, sipping her drink, “she won’t let me help either.”

Kara harrumphed, tucking her knees under her and plucking a nearby daisy, that made up part of the hundred sprouting through the untended lawn that had become a victim to the Danvers-Luthor’s car troubles. 

“I’m not pregnant.” The alien said a little sulkily.

Lena tried and failed to hide her sarcasm when she snapped, “And I have a degree in mechanical engineering that I got _for fun.”_

Kara looked at her friend owlishly. “You don’t like it when we mother you, do you?” 

The business women stared down into the liquid turning luke-warm in her cup, and shrugged diplomatically. 

“Not much. I know its because you love me, but everyone treating me like an invalid is making me want to scream.” 

Kara nodded, frowning deeply and pushing her glasses up her nose. “You’re my best friend.” 

Lena gave a comforting half smile. “I am.”

The hero pursed her lips at the daisy that she’d picked apart with surprisingly delicate fingers. “I’ll try and rein it in.” 

“I’d appreciate that.” The Luthor said warmly, giving the blonde’s shoulder a squeeze. Kara placed a hand over her friend’s, leaning her cheek to the side so that it rested over their entwined fingers. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” 

They both looked over at the almost gutted car, to see the older Danvers shaking her hand with a pained expression. On the floor by her feet lay a claw hammer, although what she had been using it for was anyone’s guess. 

“You get off, love, I need to speak to your sister.” Lena said, patting the heroines bulging bicep as she got to her feet. 

“Where’s she going?” Alex asked from around her bruised hand where she was sucking on the tender flesh. 

“Home, I think.” Lena asked, reaching past her wife to put the half empty mug down on the red, metal toolbox that she’d lugged all the way from Metropolis a lifetime ago. 

There was a moment of awkwardness, both women eyeing each other quietly for a long and uncomfortable few seconds. 

“What?” Alex asked, letting her injured hand drop to her hip. 

“Let’s go inside. We need to talk.” The brunette stated, unblinking. 

The taller woman narrowed her eyes. “Why?” 

“Because,” Lena said in a strained voice, “I am your wife and I’m asking you to come inside for five minutes to discuss something.” 

Alex’s eyes flitted briefly to the parts lying around the driveway. 

“They’ll still be there when we’re done.” Lena called over her shoulder, already walking back to the house. 

Striding into the living room, with her wife following sheepishly behind her, Lena pointed at the brand new sofa. “Will you sit with me?” 

They settled next to each other, not quite touching. Lena studied her partner’s face for a time, taking in how pale she had grown, the bags under her eyes, the worry-lines that hadn’t moved from her forehead in weeks. 

“What’s going on, darling?” 

Alex ruffled her auburn hair, plastering a false smile on her mouth that Lena felt like a punch in the guts. 

“Nothing babe. I just want to get the car fixed.” 

Lena reached out, unusually tentative, before taking her wife’s slender hand in her own. 

“Leave the car, love. If you really don’t want me to fix it myself, we’ll get someone in to do it.”

The older woman looked horrified. 

“Lena, for God’s sake, I can fix the car. You’ve told me repeatedly you haven’t had anyone in to fix a personal car since the day you passed your test, and we are not starting now. And before you say it, there is absolutely no way I’m letting my heavily pregnant wife drag herself under a damaged vehicle, it’s just not happening.” 

Lena furrowed her brow. “I’m four months pregnant, Alex, it’s not like I’m about to pop. I can still do things.” 

“I know, I just...need to do this, ok?” Alex said, pulling her hand back defensively. 

Lena planted her own hands on her knees, breathing in and out deeply. “This isn’t about the car, is it?” 

The answer when it came was so quiet as to hardly be heard. “No.” 

The younger woman shuffled a little closer on the couch. “Will you please talk to me about it?” 

The agent looked torn, and more scared than Lena thought she’d ever seen her. It made the Luthor’s stomach roil in anticipation, years of childhood neglect tearing up to fire horrific scenarios into her over-active imagination. 

“Lena, I...I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting. I know I’ve been kind of over bearing, and I know it’s been driving you nuts, but I just...I’m so scared.” 

Lena sucked her lips as she processed this. 

“You don’t want this anymore?” She managed eventually, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice as she gestured to her growing belly. 

Alex froze, an expression of outrage on her face. “Lena I want this baby more than anything. I want the family we talked about, so much. I might not be carrying them but they’re my child, my blood, and I would die for either of you in a heartbeat. I’m scared because...I’m not sure I’m going to be enough.” 

Lena blew out a breath. “Alex, what’s enough? This child is going to be so, so loved, isn’t that all that matters?” 

“I know that, I do, and believe me when I tell you that as long as I’m breathing neither you nor that baby is going to want for love but...it’s not enough. I mean, financially, I can’t provide for the two of us, let alone when we have a new mouth to feed. And I know you always say that your money is my money but I just feel like...if I can’t do any of that, the basics, how am I going to keep us all safe?” 

Lena opened her mouth to refute the words, but Alex shook her head. “I know you don’t see it like that, but it’s just how I feel. I mean, Jesus Christ, you are this bad ass CEO, who works on world changing scientific developments in her spare time, and I’m just some government lackey.”

“You are not a government lackey, Alex. You get up every day, and you go and fight crime and solve mysteries, and take out aliens bent on destruction. I’m pretty sure it’s me who won’t be able to compete in the awesomeness stakes.”

Alex shrugged, still looking down hearted. “I just needed to prove to you that I can contribute to our family, that I can protect you and our kids. I needed to prove it to myself, and I guess that _motherfucking_ car kind of became the symbol of that. Like, I might not be able to buy you a new one or build something better, but at least I could fix it when it broke. And I couldn’t even do that.” 

“Do you remember when we first got together and that guy tried to mug me on Fifth?” Lena asked, to her wife’s obvious confusion. “Do you remember what you did the day afterwards?” 

“Uh...I took you the agency, and I taught you some self defence. You nearly broke Agent Stein’s arm, he still won’t spar with me.” Alex chuckled in spite of herself. 

“And then what?” 

Alex shrugged, perplexed. “We spent like a week bumming around together. I think we watched every box set on Netflix in my crummy old apartment.” 

“Yes, because _you_ booked the week off. We’d just got back together, and you booked an entire week off to slum around NC and teach me how to throw a punch. And when I asked you why, you said that you’d always protect me, and even if you couldn’t be there right away, you’d give me the means to protect myself. How could you possibly think that you haven’t already proved the sort of wife and mother you’ll be a hundred times over?” 

Alex blinked, eyes roaming her wife’s earnest face. “Do you promise you think that? You really believe I’ll be enough?” 

“You’re already enough, my darling.” Lena said, slipping an arm around her wife’s waist so that she could pull the woman closer. “You don’t need to demonstrate it by wrapping me in cotton wool or destroying unbelievably expensive cars.” 

Allowing herself to relax at last into her beloved’s embrace, Alex buried her nose in the wispy hair around her wife’s temple. 

“Look, babe, I’m going to try to ease off a little on the over-protective stuff, ok? I’m really going to try. But, uh, yeah...the car really is fucked.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise, everything I write seems to slip into telenovela and I am powerless to stop it.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been a hell of a day, Alex thought as she stared out of her visor at the road ahead.

She’d had to get up before dawn to get to work and stop the latest alien crisis, and since then, it hadn’t really stopped. There had been a random spike in activity, not just in the criminal underworld, but even among usually peaceful off-worlders. Winn was currently analysing reams of data to try and find a cause and Kara had been dispatched to the Fortress of Solitude to track a lead, but, after 18 hours straight, Alex had announced that she was going home to her wife and no-one had been inclined to argue. 

Except Lena hadn’t been home when Alex pulled her bike up on the drive, and the CEO hadn’t sent her any messages or tried to call, so the agent had decided to head over to L Corp to try and prise the woman out of the lab or whatever spreadsheet she was bound to be eyeballs deep in. Alex been trying to be less clingy since the incident with car, but now that Lena was weeks away from her due date, it was a struggle for both of them not to be on edge and some of the old protective habits had started to creep back in.

The traffic even for that time of night was terrible, and growing worse as the motorbike roared into the business district; Alex had to weave and wind her way through the cars and HGVs blocking the main carriageway, and through the carbon fibre and Kevlar helmet she could hear the sound of sirens in the distance. Someone was having a bad Friday, she thought morosely.

Finally turning into Cordova Street, she pulled up sharp, feeling her heart start to sink to the pit of her stomach.

A cordon has been hastily erected, the barriers off kilter with the speed they’d been shoved up; a harassed looking police officer was trying to calm the slew of curiously angry drivers who had found themselves caught between the barricade and people turning into the street, making it impossible to turn around.

Over the officer’s shoulder, Alex could see a mess of emergency vehicles and uniformed personnel, forming a hap-hazard semi circle around the landscaped green that sat proudly in front of tallest and grandest tower in the city: L-Corp.

She hadn’t realised that she’d dumped the Ducati and her helmet, and rushed to the checkpoint until she felt a hand on her chest.

“M’am, you can’t go through there, there’s an incident in progress.” The young police officer said firmly.

Up close, Alex could see he was barely more than a boy, and she felt a moment of pity that such a raw recruit had been dumped on his own, front-of-house, during such a crisis. The unexpected empathy only lasted a moment, though, before she realised that this man was standing between her and her wife.

“Danvers, FBI.” She said in an authoritative voice, waving her badge in his face and striding forwards without a second glance.

“M’am! I need to check with-“

Alex fixed his face with a furious glower, causing him to take a step back.

“Listen to me, Officer. I am needed right now in the middle of that scrum, do you understand? Lives are at stake, and I don’t have time to hang around here while you try and radio whoever the hell you need to speak to to get me clearance. Do you understand?”

There was a moment of panic on the boy’s face that the older woman felt mildly guilty for, before he nodded curtly and turned back to the gathering crowd at the barriers.

The closer she got, the more severe she realised the situation was. The uniformed paramedics were hanging back behind the line of squad cars, and the police were suited in their bullet-proofs, weapons drawn.

Alex grabbed the nearest officer, a woman of about fifty with stress lines etched across her pretty face.

“Agent Danvers, FBI.” The Agent said, deliberately omitting her married name. “What’s the situation?”

The officer blew her cheeks out expressively, shaking her head.

“Bad. A gang of some kind, armed up to the teeth. Some kind of robbery, it seems like. They’ve taken hostages, thirty or so, and they’re armed to the teeth. The Specials are trying to talk them down now.”

“What about...” Alex licked her lips, “what about Lena Luthor?”

The policewoman frowned. “Oh yeah, they got her first - strolled right up to her office and grabbed her. Poor things pregnant, too.”

Alex nodded, trying to quell the seething torrent of fear that had washed over her skin. 

Turning away from the black woman with a half-hearted nod of thanks, Alex moved purposefully away from the flashing lights and towards the side of the building that was still, fortunately, shrouded in darkness. Away to the left, she could see workers rushing to get floodlighting set up that would douse the whole scene in light bright as midday, and the agent knew she only had minutes to get inside.

Finally hidden by the gloom, the lithe woman broke into a sprint, letting her senses take over to avoid trip hazards, a skill honed on endless competitive night runs through the mountains with Susan Vasquez, back when they first started working together and were trying to get the measure of each other.

Ahead of her she could see the the vague outline of the double doors to the fire escape stairs that led from the upper floors. Skidding up to the door on her knees, grateful for the thick biker leathers that saved her some nasty grazes, Alex pulled from an inside pocket the antique Swiss Army knife that Eliza had brought her when she first found out about the DEO, selected the larger blade and jammed it in the divide. She worked it like a lever, desperately trying to prize the gap wider, and had begun muttering angrily in frustration when the door was slammed open from the inside.

Rolling backwards without a second of hesitation, the oldest Danvers sprung into a low crouch, the knife in her hand poised ready to strike.

“Mrs Danvers-Luthor?” A scared voice asked.

“Jess?” Alex asked, peering through the darkness at the small, feminine woman huddled inside. Jess Wong was a constant feature in the life of the Danvers-Luthor’s, and seeing her now felt oddly comforting.

Behind them came the sound of a generator roaring into life.

Alex hurried inside, ushering the secretary towards the exit as she did so. 

“Jess, you need to go - just go and keep running ok? Don’t look back.”

To her surprise, the young woman dug in, twisting from her grasp, and shut the doors carefully so as not to make a sound. 

“I wasn’t leaving, I was going to get help but you’ll do.” Jess said absently, bending over to rub her feet. Alex noticed now that the woman had no shoes on, and her stockings were torn and bloodied from cuts that she could see through the tears. The secretary saw her boss’s wife looking and shrugged expressively. “They smashed up Lena’s office pretty badly, after the commotion died down I went in to try and find her and...well, the glass...”

Alex swallowed, hard, and nodded. “Thank you Jess. For everything. Now, can you show me where they are?”

The younger woman gave a half smile. “Oh, I sure can.”

 

The main reception hall of L Corp was a nightmare.

From their position on the mezzanine floor that sheltered the welcome desks, Alex could count at least 7 heavily armed soldiers in full riot gear, faces covered. They were evenly spread out around the cluster of frightened looking hostages, but from what she could see, they were confined to the ground floor. 

Jess was looking at her expectantly, and the lesbian desperately wished that she could give some reassurance, but the fact was she couldn’t see a way of taking out more than three of the combatants before they ate a shower of shit. It was lucky, then, she thought with a smirk, that she had back up.

Flicking open the veneer of her watch, she pressed the button that would summon Supergirl; less than a minute later, a rain of masonry and glass showered down from a Kara shaped hole in the main frontage of the building. 

Triumphantly, Alex leapt forward, free falling the 15 feet to the mock-marble floor and rolling into a fighting pose. She had taken out the nearest 2 crooks before she realised that the expected hale of bullets had never arrived.

Turning, she took in the crooks firing enthusiastically on her sister, who was easily blocking each shot from hitting any of the hostages. In the fray, no one was paying the stray agent much attention. Moving forwards stealthily, intending on taking out a few more of the bad guys while she had the chance, a movement to her left caught her eye.

A man, his lower face covered by some kind of gas mask, was dragging a struggling Lena Danvers-Luthor across the floor. Hardly sparing Alex a glance, he threw the CEO heavily to the ground. Alex winced as her wife skidded on her side a few metres, arms wrapped protectively around her distended belly.

“Supergirl!” The man shouted, his voice muffled by the mask. Around them, the guns fell silent. “I’m so glad you could make it! As our guest of honour, it would be a shame if you missed the main act!”

“Who are you and what do you want?” The hero called back.

The armed group laughed in unison then, and Alex took the opportunity to shuffle closer to where Lena sat wide-eyed on the floor, looking up between her tormentors and best friend with frightened green eyes. When she noticed Alex, the brunette almost imperceptibly shook her head. Swallowing, Alex willed her legs to keep moving; they could argue about it later, she reasoned.

“We are the Daxamites who lost everything to this pitiful excuse of a world.” The leader hissed, causing the guffaws to instantly cease. “And what we want is to see your face when we murder Lena Luthor of the humans right here in front of you, just as we watched our loved ones perish when the last Kryptonians set off the Luthor’s lead bomb. And then...we want to watch you die.”

There was no preamble after that, just the world slowing to a trickle. Firstly, the other members of the gang stared firing, forcing Kara to leap into action to protect the shrieking hostages. Then, in painful slow motion, the head Daxamite pulled a handgun from an old fashioned holster at his belt, aimed it at the pregnant woman on the floor, and squeezed the trigger.

Alex knew then that all was lost. There was no way that Kara could abandon the innocent people in her care, no way that the blonde could get there in time to stop the bullet on its path, and with a sudden realisation of what needed to be done, Alex Danvers-Luthor threw herself bodily between the shooter and the woman she loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Melodrama, every time.


	4. Chapter 4

The sound of fidgeting drifting from the expensive-looking baby monitor was what woke her up, an almost sixth sense that had been honed in the 3 months since she became a mother telling her that the baby was waking, needing to be fed and fussed. 

The room was still dark, a thick heat laying heavy on every surface that the ceiling fan barely touched; it had lasted weeks now, making the days feel weary, and the baby restless in her cot. The digital clock on the bedside table read 3:06.

Forcing her eyes to stay open, the woman slid out of bed and padded quietly across the dark hardwood floor of the landing to the nursery. The walls in the dimness seemed an almost midnight blue, not the powder blue that would be revealed in the daylight, and the Beatrix Potter characters hand-painted by Supergirl herself looked amorphous and oddly mobile.

The cot, a simple Moses basket on a stainless steel rocker, sat in the middle of the floor. Over the rim, two little hands were waving in the air, trying to grab the little plastic worlds that hung from the rocking frame; every now and then, two feet would pop up too, earning a slap from the pudgy hands, before dropping out of sight.

Alex chuckled gently, looking down at her daughter with tired, prideful eyes.

They’d named their baby ‘Vera’, partly after Alex’s favourite blues singer, but mainly because Lena would rather have named the child a curse word than a ‘Luthor L’. The girl had been born with a shock of red hair that she’d inherited from Alex, and startling green eyes that the agent knew must come from the donor’s DNA, but that she liked to imagine had passed to Vera in the womb, so startlingly like Lena’s did they appear.

“Hey Vee, you’re up early. You hungry?” The woman whispered, reaching down to stroke the soft hair that was starting to thin atop the child’s little head. The baby cooed at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Come to your mom, angel.” 

Lifting the little body from the cot was an effort, but she was getting the hang of it now. Though the spot where the bullet had lodged in her side was all but healed, it still gave her pain, especially at times like now when she had to stretch or if she took a knock to her remaining ribs.

She didn’t remember much from that night, not after the first shot; could recal trying to slither backwards, to drape her damaged body across Lena’s even as the pregnant woman tried to push herself in front of her injured wife; could picture the shooter’s look of confusion as Jess hit him cleanly across the back of the head with a heavy looking earthenware plant pot; could still feel the relief as J’onn landed in the middle of the fray, accompanied by a squad of DEO agents, and she knew that everything was going to be OK.

There were other memories, that she tried not to dwell on. Kara screaming at J’onn, demanding to know why they hadn’t known about the Daxamites sooner, her voice more like the scared 13 year old girl that Alex had first met than her goofy grown-up little sister; Lena clasping her blood-slick hands in the back of the ambulance, telling her to live through it or face her wrath, to survive for her, for their love, for the life in Lena’s belly who would need both its mothers. Mostly, though, it was blur of missing parts and hallucinations, of obscure feelings and smells and sounds that didn’t seem to fit, and, coating it all like a hard shell, pain.

It seemed like longer ago than it was, now. 6 weeks after the operation to remove the bullet and some of the shattered fragments of rib bone that the slug had smashed on its way in, Lena had given her the baby currently banana-ing in her arms. It had been long, as first-time labours are want to be, and it had been excruciating to watch Lena struggle through the almost endless hours with barely a sound, her face determined and her eyes pleading with the agony. But when the wrinkled, bright-red, screaming infant had been placed in the Danver’s shaking hands (carefully, so as not to upset the wound still bandaged at her side), Alex knew that nothing, no feeling she had felt before or since, had ever come close to the feeling of completion and contentment blossoming in her heart at that moment.

Reaching into the small desk-top fridge that Alex had, in her youth, used to store beers in college dorm rooms but that now held a couple of bottles of expressed milk every night, she felt Vera go very still. 

“You remember where mom gets the food from, huh? You’re a clever girl, Vee, just like your mama.” Alex whispered, rubbing the nipple of the bottle on the baby’s bottom lip. Vera stared up at her and started to drink, a thoughtful expression on her chubby face.

Looking down at her daughter, Alex started to sway, humming softly at first before breaking into hushed singing.

_Oh the ogs eye man is the man for me,_  
_He was born and bred in Tennessee,_  
_With your ogs eye-oh, row the boat a-shore,_  
_With your ogs eye, steady on the tiller with your ogs eye-oh,_  
_You are the ogs eye man_

The baby closed her eyes, sucking gently, her hand wrapping into the baggy cotton of Alex’s t-shirt.

“You aren’t teaching her raunchy songs again, are you?”

Turning slightly, Alex saw her wife standing in the doorway, leaning casually on the frame. Lena’s black hair was down and a little wild, and she was wearing one of Alex’s old tank tops, the material hanging low from too many washes, and a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms. The swell of her stomach was still prominent, and it made Alex’s heart skip a beat.

“That was one time, and it wasn’t _raunchy_ , babe, it was cultural.” Alex said with a cheeky smirk.

“It was ‘Seven Drunken Nights’ and just because it’s by the Dubliners, doesn’t make it cultural.” Lena huffed half heartedly, stepping into the room and leaning into her wife’s side, her chin pressing into the solid muscle of the older woman’s bicep. Alex placed a chaste kiss on the top of the brunette’s head.

Vera’s cry broke the comfortable silence. Lena shook her head, prising the now empty bottle from the other woman’s fingers.

“Hungry little monkey. Give her to me, darling, I’ll finish up.” 

Alex reluctantly handed the child over, tutting at the tiny body-shaped sweat patch now adorning her chest. 

“I’ll go get the breakfast on.” She said mostly to herself, squinting at the curtains that now showed the slight yellowing of the dawn outside. Lena sighed, a grateful smile on her face, as Vera latched to her left breast happily.

“Only another three months and I’ll be able to drink real coffee.” The younger woman said wistfully.

Alex smiled, making her way to the door. “No more fruit teas. No more warm honey and lemon. I’ll make you real coffee every day for a year, I promise.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “As a reward for months of abstinence?” 

“As a thank you, for everything you’ve given me.” The taller woman winked before disappearing down the hall.

Watching her go, the youngest Luthor squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her daughter closer. The night that they’d nearly lost everything had never really left her; she saw it often in her dreams and would wake up on those nights terrified, bringing Vera to their room and clinging to Alex like she could somehow keep her family safe by the reach of her arms alone.

What the incident hadn’t done, though, was leave her empty, as previous tragedies in her life had. Instead, as she sat all night in the uncaring magnolia waiting room at the hospital, wedged between Eliza and Kara, with J’onn pacing the hall outside, Lena Danvers-Luthor had felt the beginning of a fire. It burned in her gut, through the life pulsing in her uterus, expanding until it filled every cell in her body, and what the fire said was: This is my family, my wife and daughter and sister and mother, and I will protect them.

She felt the familiar flicker now, as she listened to her lover banging pots around the kitchen, and felt Vee’s breathing becoming shallower as the baby fell asleep at her leaking breast. Lena wondered, not for the first time, if this had been what Alex had felt all along - protectiveness bordering on possessiveness, something hot and insatiable and stronger than any metal.

Looking down at Vera, Lena smiled.

“You are so loved, my darling, and you’ll always have so many people on your side to fight for you. I promise, sweetheart, your mom and your mama will always keep you safe, no matter who we have to go through to do it.”

In her arms, the little girl wrinkled her nose in her sleep, flexing the perfect fingers of her right hand, and dreamt on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As God is my witness, I will always end on fluff, and I will always make sure the lesbians live Happily Ever After.


End file.
